Desert Sanctuary
by Nyruserra
Summary: The heat of the desert scoured everything, bleaching until there was no longer a line between remembered and forgotten.    Femmeslash  HS.T'Pol, hints of HS.MR


**Desert Sanctuary**

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The air in her quarters was spicy and weighed in Hoshi's lungs, like hull plating - somewhere she thought she heard chimes, but it was far off, much further then the close walls of the cramped quarters allowed for.

Sometimes she thought it was in her blood, though she would have wondered why she thought that, if she ever remembered afterward.

When rational thoughts return, late in the Gamma shift, when the cooling sheets no longer hold the residual heat of her lover's body, she will bury her head in frustration, and struggle to make sense of what was happening, what _could_ be happening. The thoughts will quickly get pushed aside. She's content; numbed. And out here, in the cold, chaotic reaches of deep space, it's a warm molasses-like feeling in her gut that has been missing for far too long. One more proof that Hoshi Sato existed.

Mattered.

_(There had been music that night. Warm copper bells, __discordantly soothing tintinnabulations lost in the fragrant alien darkness)_

But here, in _her_ quarters, everything is _now_, and there are no more thoughts of _tomorrow_, or _yesterday_, and T'Pol's skin tastes of warmth and spice and tea – Hoshi can't quite decide how one can taste warmth, but it doesn't matter. T'Pol hums softly under the cool pressure of her kisses, the not-quite sound vibrating against Hoshi's swollen lips as they move over the olive-hued skin of her collar bone.

They didn't speak much during these encounters; but it wasn't the dispassionate silence of two people desperately seeking what can only be seen behind closed eyelids, but a release and safe haven; and it was enough. Hoshi built the verbal bridges the ship and a desperate crew of eighty-six people relied on everyday to make it through their mission; what could always end up being their final mission.

Here, in this room, there are no words - only the warm sound of bells shuddering in the night air.

The air recycler cycles off, the almost inaudible buzz to everyone but Hoshi lost for a few hours, and with it, the sound of the chimes fades like heat hazed pavement shimmering in the sun.

Hoshi thinks that maybe she should get off the ship more.

T'Pol's skin is glowing faintly copper, and Hoshi pauses just to admire the lean lines of her lithe body in the flickering light of the forgotten meditation candles.

Silk glides like water against her skin as she moves across the other woman's body, trailing wet lips and sharp tongue hungrily over dusky rose nipples, aggressively working the flesh until she feels the other woman start to strain against her bonds. Aroused; needy. The scarlet splash of colour shocking, where everything is cool and neutral and tranquil, and Hoshi is fiercely satisfied by the dichotomy of it, even while she pushes the thought away.

_We were discrete. No discussions but in the quiet moments of passion spent, as if you could somehow bind it with your words, tie me to you and encapsulate that vulnerability into something you could defend)_

The scarves won't really hold her anyway, T'Pol's otherworldly strength renders them more a minor nuisance then a genuine threat, but she has readily relinquished control, waiting to see what Hoshi does with this freedom, her large brown eyes regard her, curious.

Hoshi has learned that logic does not preclude games.

She's thrilled to see that her serene countenance is beginning to waver, tiny betraying movements of hips and stomach more erotic than even the soft changes in her lover's breathing as it shifts from calm and controlled to soundless moans; even in the depths of passion, the Vulcan would never abandon herself so far. It doesn't matter. For someone who has deciphered language and meaning from the liquid noises of a (_most definitely__not strawberry flavoured)_ gelatinous race, the quiet hints of shifting musculature and barely-there vacillations in expression are sonorous in the warmth and un-competing quiet of this place.

_(They had thought you too quiet, too withdrawn, but they were deaf. You told me all I needed; every gesture, every nuisance a declaration of the very essence of who you were, layers of stiff reserve and discipline a barrier for one who felt not enough, but too deep. Tight control and economy of movement — a fulmination of being against all that would shatter what you would hold safe)_

Cooling on the thin, Starfleet issue mattress, T'Pol lay, panting, body still trembling minutely from the tiny pinprick explosions tingling along her sensitized skin, small aftershocks left in the wake of her pleasure. Hoshi can still taste her, a musky flavour that speaks of sand and desert and warmth in a place that is nothing but cold vacuum, and she pushes herself up on to one watery elbow. It isn't easy on the narrow bunk, but she loves to see the normally stoic Vulcan like this, to know that she had effected her, defiantly leaving her mark on that almost ageless _Katra _forever. She could stay like this, childishly satisfied in a thing broken, but it's not long before T'Pol is encouraging her submission, soft caresses of silk covered steel gentling her to lie back, telling her of everything she finds too loud to hear, emotions too painfully sharp when verbalized.

Things she had once heard in the hands of another.

_(Weapon's fire__ — the sounds agonizingly loud, even in my nightmares. The scarlet shock is too much to take in before the sand swallows it; ribbons of silk devoured. In moments, no evidence of you is left on that vast sand-sea, its heat-forged sterility too eternal a thing to be changed by the likes of us._

_There should have been something left, damnit; some trace, some testament of you._

_But I know that's where you are)_

They call it _le petite mort_, and Hoshi is vaguely contented in this as she shuts down a little more inside, instead savouring the satisfyingly abrasive texture of the Starfleet-issue linens against her skin.

T'Pol once tried to help her; told her to envision a beautiful green sea - to imagine herself surrounded by the calming shushing of the waves, their lapping sounds working into her subconscious, washing away her fear, her uncertainty.

_(The mourners wore robes the exact colour of you're eyes.__ I wanted to share my observation with you, though I knew you'd find it silly. I wanted to hear that soft laugh, the one you only shared with me. _

_W__here were you? _

_The kohl they wore stood out __darkly in the deep purple dusk, discordant as I listened for you, but you were motionless; silent for the first time since I had known you. _

_I am left to wonder if __you ever earned enough of those damned Eagle Scout badges you and the Captain playfully bragged - like two little boys - to navigate your way back to me from under alien stars?) _

Instead, Hoshi loses herself in heated remembrances of a vast sand-scoured plain, the twin suns' warmth like a physical thing as they beat down.

T'Pol is with her, and it's _now_, and there is no _tomorrow_ or _yesterday_ in her familiar _grey_ eyes. The pendulum sounds of the tingling metal move through her, riding the crest of her pleasure with its copper tones and for one nearly endless moment, Hoshi welcomes them; her desert chimes.

And faintly, she breaths in the memory of old-fashioned shaving cream and musk, lost in the vociferous silence of another's embrace, the air redolent with the spice of alien night-blooms.

Fini


End file.
